Posts Tagged ‘Dodge 1500’

Chrysler has announced plans of delivering ten plug-in hybrid Dodge 1500’s to Department of Energy of Detroit. This is in accordance to The Big Three’s goal of building pick-up trucks that will turn construction guys go wild. While the Big Three have been experiencing some kind of troubles over the past years, they managed to keep sane over what’s happening in the industry.
While is also true that many members of the trucking community dispel the idea of turning in hybrid technology to the beloved go-to-workhorse, Chrysler is not giving up hope and isn’t buying the said idea and thinks these guys will soon have open minds with hybrid type trucks.
Chrysler senior manager for advanced hybrid vehicles projects, Abdullah Bazzi disclosed that cities have been carefully selected by Chrysler Group LLC to help in collecting wide range of data and so far have distributed a total of more than 100 test vehicles in these different US cities in gathering data for market research.
Chrysler promptly added that this plan is strictly a test program and there’s still no plan for production version of the trucks in the future but the trucks will be test driven to evaluate the factors that may help out the company for future use.
The test program plans to test the charging performance, city drive cycles, fuel efficiency and the much contested real-world performance. Chrysler also added that although only a hybrid technology test program, the truck will not be less of a punch. These trucks have the options to run in four or two wheel drive for that fuel efficiency factor and they also have Hemi 5.7 under their hood. It makes the hybrid truck as the one to watch for the coming years.
The project is jointly funded by Chrysler and the Department of Energy and at the same time have a joint venture in developing a same fleet of 25 PHEV Town& County mini vans. Chrysler has high hopes that these hybrid trucks will be met with more open and unbiased evaluation from the trucking community.
Chrysler will start the project soon and will release statement pertaining to the data that has been gathered and generated by the test drive. Meanwhile it is encouraging other US cities to take part and participate to make the project accessible and encouraging to truckers who in the near future will have positive outlook for hybrid technology for this tough workhorse.